The New Idea

Adair Meira has developed a program of environmental conservation that trains disadvantaged youth as environmental educators and then places them in after-school jobs with local industries, where they earn valuable supplemental incomes for their families and spark environmentally-friendly reforms within the companies. The program addresses several serious social problems simultaneously. It makes environmentalists out of those youth who are otherwise most likely to find their livelihoods in activities harmful to the environment. It also provides those youth with what they and their families most need, supplemental income, and in so doing demonstrates the principle that environmental awareness is also an asset in the job market. Moreover, it injects a youthful, idealistic eco-friendliness into the companies employing the youth.

The operation is straightforward. Adair's Pro-Cerrado Foundation provides the youth it serves with a basic education in rural and urban environment, selective waste collection/recycling, reforestation and other practical environmental protection measures. It also gives them training in job skills (and general work etiquette) that are required by the participating companies, such as photocopying, basic administration, filing, and mail room work, and construction assistance. Once placed in the companies, the youth perform their main employment tasks and serve as company-sanctioned environmental educators, gaining and spreading sensitivity to environmental issues and encouraging concrete measures, such as power and water conservation programs, selective waste collection and so on. The Foundation provides ongoing technical support to the youth in this role.

With a program operating in 23 cities in his home area in the states of Goiás and Tocantins, and the Federal District of Brasilia, the foundation is now involved in a series of programs. The main actions of the foundation are environmental education, basic school support, and job placements. Adair and his Pro-Cerrado youth have pioneered a paradigm of "citizen-based business," encouraging many companies to adopt "green" and "socially-conscious" practices regarding recycling, electricity use, and employment policies. Now that the program is consolidated in both urban and rural areas, Adair has established an Environmental Training Center to serve both as a hub for existing nuclei and a point of reference for others to be set up elsewhere to extend the reach of the project.

The Problem

In Brazil, as throughout the world, habitat and species loss have reached alarming proportions due to the depletion of the environment that has accompanied industrialization, urbanization, and population growth. Brazil's Cerrado Biome is a case in point. Covering 100 percent of Goiás State and fully 24 percent of Brazil, its ecological value is poorly understood, and, as a consequence, it is in a process of unchecked devastation. There is a deep-rooted belief that the Cerrado ought to be transformed into pasture or crop land. This idea serves the interests of iron and steel manufacturers, which have built high-polluting plants fueled by cheap Cerrado charcoal. Their demand has spawned a mini-economy of charcoal production that is a major factor contributing to the downfall of the Biome. Ironically, even in economic terms, with the death of the ecosystem a whole series of sustainable development options such as eco-tourism, pharmacological products, food and native raw materials will be lost forever.

Of course, as the Cerrado is destroyed, it accelerates the rural to urban migration of those no longer able to eke out a livelihood sustainably on the land, swelling the numbers of the urban unemployed. If the pattern and structure of Brazil's economic development are the main culprits in this human and environemental tragedy, it has to be said that there are few real alternatives being offered. Many companies, for example, have become aware of the environment as an issue, but they tend to see it in defeatist "all or nothing" terms, and most do not act even in incremental ways to modify their own destructive practices.

The Strategy

Adair's strategy is simple and effective. He is transforming the Cerrado Biome and environmental awareness into economic assets for youth. To do this he is educating the next generation of Brazilian citizens about the environment and showing them that this knowledge can help them get their first jobs as well as make a productive niche for themselves within the corporate world. Since 1996, Adair has made great progress in expanding his project. From 64 young people, he has grown his population served to 3,528 adolescents. He has developed a system of partnerships with 1,500 private/public companies and 2,000 private enterprises. He has also formed a partnership with the Federal Ministry of Labor that supports part of his training efforts, mainly through the FAT fund (Worker Support Fund). This money supports an extension program in the form of traveling buses, which bring computer skills and other courses to young people at home in their communities.

The strategy is elegant in its simplicity and, although the route has been long, arduous, and extraordinary, Adair has managed to accomplish expanding his work while maintaining a high standard of quality. This is the reason why he is now in negotiations with the new state government to replicate his program in rural areas where the situation of environmental deterioration and exploitation of youth labor in the charcoal fields is crying out for change.

Adair is also reaching a country-wide audience through the National Conference of Environmental Education and his methodologies are being observed and adopted by NGOs across Brazil. Environmental educators and employment professionals are visiting the Pro-Cerrado to learn about Adair's methodologies. The program has already been replicated by one large NGO in Bahia. Yet another proof of his effectiveness in working with the business community is that a large hydro-electric company is asking Adair to help them plan how to work with the local residents when their new plant is constructed.

Pursuing his goals to preserve the environment, Adair is mounting a forestry bank, funded by the Japanese government, to allow farmers to borrow seedlings on credit and repay the bank once the trees are in production. To stimulate the process, he is launching a campaign called SOS-Cerrado, which involves the public. The idea is to preserve the native plants of the area. A publicity poster shows sapling tree growing out of a young person's hand, and the text reads, "I planted a change."

Adair has set up an Environmental Training Center to serve both as a hub for existing nuclei and a base for national expansion through training Brazil's environmental educators in the Pro-Cerrado model. In partnership with the Foundation for Children and Adolescents and the Goias State Secretary of Sports, Pro-Cerrado located an urban eyesore, a stadium that had been in disuse for eight years, and transformed the top floor into classrooms. Adair's youth brigades cleaned out the space and prepared it for renovation. Now the site houses the Professional Training Program, where courses began in August 1998. Pro-Cerrado's young people will continue to maintain the building and the walkways, swimming pool, and surrounding gardens. Pro-Cerrado publishes a bimonthly newsletter, with 5,000 copies, covering its activities. Recently Adair implemented an "800" phone line to answer questions and respond to the demand for information about the organization.

The Person

Adair comes from a family of modest means from Rio Grande do Sul State in southern Brazil. After losing his father in his teens, Adair, his mother and four brothers moved to Goiás, where he finished high school. After high school, he had to work full-time to contribute to the family income, a sadness for him as he had a desire to study. He was able, however, to pursue his field of interest, communications, by landing a job at an advertising and public relations firm. Within a few years, at the age of 21, he started his own firm, which he ran successfully until leaving it to devote himself full-time to the Pro-Cerrado Foundation.

As is often the case with novel combinations of social institutions and fields, this one emerged from Adair's life experience. As an advertiser and public relations professional, he developed a client base among the leading comanies of Goiás State. Many of the advertisements he created were set in the beautiful landscapes of the Cerrado. Slowly, he became interested in these landscapes and then began to see their devatstation. He studied the Cerrado in night courses at the university, placating his long pent-up desire for the advanced education that he could not obtain as a youth because of his family's modest means.

At the same time, he was volunteering in a program working with disadvantaged youth, many of them recent arrivals in the city who were living on the streets. He came to know these children, their families, and their communities exceptionally well - and is trusted by them. His commitment to disadvantaged youth converged with his growing interest in the environment as he learned about the rural roots of most of these children and came to understand the context of their rootlessness in the "city." This insight spurred him to begin his environmental education lectures in the local schools. His first step was to begin to give slide show lectures in the schools about the Cerrado. Thinking all the time about how to do more to protect the environment, and seeing how difficult it was for parents and pupils to feel any commitment to environmental issues or with education in general because their basic concerns were employment and health, his idea to link environmental education with youth employment was born. In the Pro-Cerrado Foundation, Adair has found the integration of his passion for the environment, his commitment to disadvantaged youth and his professional talents as a communicator.